By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 June 2021
The fifth speech of the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Hamza al-Qurayshi, was released earlier today by Al-Furqan Media under the title, “You Are Most Exalted If You Are [True] Believers” (وأنتم متفوقون إذا كنتم مؤمنين), drawn from Qur’an 3:139. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 June 2021
Massive explosion at Khojir in eastern Tehran lights up the night sky, 25 June 2021 [image source]
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 May 2021
Israel’s Iron Dome missile defence system [left] activates over southern Israel against incoming HAMAS rockets [right], 14 May 2021
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 24 May 2021
Taha Falaha (Abu Muhammad al-Adnani) is probably most famous for the September 2014 speech he made as the official spokesman for the Islamic State (IS) calling for international terrorist attacks, which initiated a wave of atrocities in Europe and beyond lasting about three years. But Falaha had been in office by that time, formally, since the summer of 2011, and in total he would make two-dozen speeches before he was killed at the end of August 2016. The twelfth speech, entitled, “The Scout Doesn’t Lie to His People”, and reproduced below,[1] was made on 7 January 2014, four days after the onset of a massive assault on IS by the Syrian rebellion that inter alia killed senior jihadist commanders like Samir al-Khlifawi (Haji Bakr or Abu Bakr al-Iraqi). What is interesting about this speech, as revealed in the recent Al-Naba profile of Falaha’s great friend and collaborator, the media emir Wael al-Ta’i (Abu Muhammad al-Furqan), is that Falaha composed this speech while he was besieged by the rebels in Aleppo. Al-Ta’i had evacuated the IS media department and their families, then slipped back into the area surrounded by the rebels to help Falaha compose IS’s first political counter-measure to this unexpected development in Syria, which was followed nearly a fortnight afterwards by a speech from the caliph himself, Ibrahim al-Badri (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi). Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 May 2021
Al-Naba 287, page three
The last two issues of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), had a number of interesting items, most obviously finally breaking its silence on the latest flare-up between Israel and HAMAS. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 May 2021
Wael al-Ta’i (Abu Muhammad al-Furqan), Al-Naba 285, p. 3
The 285th edition of Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter of the Islamic State (IS), released on 6 May, had a biography of Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, one of the most important IS leaders, the head of its Central Media Department and its operational ruler when he was killed in September 2016. Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 5 April 2021
Ahmad al-Khalayleh (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), the infamous founder of the Islamic State movement, known at the time as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and formerly part of the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), was killed on 7 June 2006. Zarqawi’s successor was officially announced five days later, in a written statement released on 12 June, as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, an Egyptian with a long history in and around Al-Qaeda. The next day, 13 June 2006, Abu Hamza gave his first speech as AQI emir, entitled, “The Gathering Will Be Defeated and They Will Turn Their Backs [in Retreat]”, drawn from an ayat of the Qur’an (54:45). The statement and the speech are translated below.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 29 March 2021
Tsar Pavel I
A few days ago, it was the 220th anniversary of the palace coup that, in the early hours of 24 March 1801, deposed the Russian Tsar, Pavel (Paul) I, the last of the Russian monarchs to fall in this way.[1] Continue reading
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 19 March 2021
Hamid al-Zawi, the leader of the Islamic State movement from 2006 to 2010, known only as Abu Umar al-Baghdadi during his lifetime, gave a speech on 19 March 2010 entitled, “The Soldiers’ Sermon for the Axe of al-Khalil Campaign” (Khutba al-Jund bi-Hamlat Fa’s al-Khalil). It was Al-Zawi’s twenty-second and, as it turned out, penultimate speech. Al-Zawi was killed almost exactly a month later, on 18 April 2010, alongside his deputy and “war minister”, Abd al-Munim al-Badawi (Abu Hamza al-Muhajir). A translation of the speech is published below.
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 March 2021
Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, the implied caliph of the Islamic State movement between 2006 and 2010, gave his sixteenth speech on 17 March 2009. The title of the speech was, “Harvest of the Good (The Gathering Will Be Defeated, and They Will Turn Their Backs and Flee)”.[1]
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